SESSION SEVEN

This week’s lesson(before the break:D ) is the topic on Biobusiness Revolution : Agribiology, Environmental Life Sciences and Industrial Biotechnology. It is yet another fresh topic for me and my knowledge bank expanded again J

First and foremost, we started the lesson with a quote by Prof : “ When we are able to grow the resources we need, we will finally be on the road to sustainability”. There is no doubt that the way humans are exploiting the environment today, it is hard to imagine what will be left for our future generations. Unless we can make products sustainably, we will never have a sustainable world. However, with regards to Prof’s quote, I believe human ingenuity will enable us to grow the resources we need. We see improvements in the world today and some examples include proving Malthusian’s theory wrong, continuing innovating bio-degradable and renewable resources like bioplastics, biofuels, nuclear energy, green technology, blue technology etc. We are at least off to a good start to creating a sustainable world.

Also on Tuesday’s lesson, we had the honor to have a Japanese guest with us during lecture and she is a part of the Unicef. She mentioned that Unicef is doing their part by providing education to the less fortunate. This preventive measure is commendable as they are practicing “Be the change you want to see in the world” as mentioned a few lessons ago. In this way, the world will have less people suffering by being uneducated, and vicious cycle will affect lesser people in the world.

Another quote I would like to comment on is : “There’s enough on this planet for everyone’s need but not for everyone’s greed” by Mahatma Gandhi. I thought this quote really hit the nail on the head. Everyone is talking about food shortage and more food shortage for the world. In fact, in the world we live in today, there is more than enough food to feed everyone. However, why are there still about 1 billion people short of food? The reason is greed. Corruption is rampant in some of the most affected less developed countries. There are millions of people starving and dying in Zimbabwe for example because of the incompetency of the government. We shouldn’t be in the situation whereby a billion people are suffering but because of greedy and selfish people, some people are unfortunately still stuck in the poverty cycle.

GM food was mentioned during class too. In my opinion, whether or not GM food are labeled or not, it does not really matter to me. I think not only me, but a lot of people out there have been consuming GM food all their lives and since they have not been labeled from then, I think the tradition can still be carried on. However, objectively speaking, companies should label as some people might be allergic to certain common food substances like peanuts or milk. The health of these people are put at a risk if they do not label the GM food.

Overall, I would rate the lesson 8/10.